Thursday, December 10, 2015

Meet Author Monique DeVere

I have a super treat for you today. Friend and fellow author Monique DeVere is a great supporter of authors through the group Authors Helping Authors. Please welcome her.

Hi, Monique. Please tell us about yourself.

Hi, Diane! Thanks for letting me
hang with you. I am an author of what I like to think is light and funny
romances. They tend to lean toward the spicy side of the romance genre but are
clean for language. I also write Christian Supernatural Suspense scripts.

When did you first realize you
wanted to be a writer?

Originally,
I wanted to be a doctor but I was one of those kids who spent a lot of
time gazing out the window lost in daydreams and made-up stories. That
should have been a great clue that my destiny was to be an author. For as
far back as I can remember I made up stories for my family and friends. I
even wrote them down and sold them for 10 cents each. I wrote my first
full-length book at age 15 and by 18 I decided that being an author was
far more exciting than being a doctor. Besides, as an author I could be
anything I wanted to be! Far more appealing.

How long does it take you to
write a book?

I can
write a 50K book in a month. That is not to say I get the chance to do so
all that often. I have a lot of people around me who infringe on my time.
But once I knuckle down to write I can easily put out 3K+ words per day
five days per week—taking weekends off. I write in the morning and edit in
the afternoon. I wish I was the type of author who writes the first draft
straight through then do the edits after, but I just can’t leave a chapter
unedited and move on.

I can't either, Monique. What is your work schedule like
when you're writing?

Rise at
3am and write until 6am. Exercise, shower, dress, do the school run.
Return and take the dog for a 3.5 mile walk which takes me just over an
hour. Write some more or edit until lunchtime, then take a break for
lunch. Do household chores, school pick up, dinner and family. I will
sometimes creep back to my home office to work if I haven’t fallen asleep
on the settee on hubby’s lap while attempting to watch TV with him J.

Where do you get your information
or ideas for your books?

Book
ideas usually pop into my head in title form while I’m in the shower or
doing chores.

What do you like to do when
you're not writing?

When
I’m not writing I love to watch religious channels and learn about life
after death, Heaven, hell, and everything Christian supernatural.

Where do you start when writing?
Research, plotting, outline, or...?

My book
ideas usually start with a title, followed closely by the two central
characters, the cute meet and the main story line. I then have to dig down
deep for their internal conflicts. Then I create my list of relevant
scenes on A4 copy paper which I usually misplace somewhere in the mess of
paper on my desk. I tend to do research as I go.

Your desk sounds like mine. What do you hope readers take
with them after reading your work?

Love! I
hope that my readers experience a sense of love and joy when reading my
books and, once they close them, I hope they walk away convinced that
there is true love out there for everyone—even if they’ve had the worst
luck in love to date.

What a lovely thought. Tell us about your latest release.

My new
release is a contemporary romantic comedy. It’s the first in a new series
featuring three friends—Dani, Jess & Sierra. This is Dani and Casey’s
story. Dani comes from a family of lawyers and, after having her heart
stepped on by a few exes who happened to be lawyers, she has vowed to
never fall in love with an attorney again. Casey is an attorney who sticks
to a code of practice; never date the boss’s daughter. So what happens
when these two get roped into a deception that neither of them can resist?

Ex-lawyer turned pregnancy model Danielle
Hampton has one simple rule;
never date an attorney, even if he’s so deliciously
hot she’s nicknamed him His Hotness Esquire. When her father asks her to
strap on her silicone bump and pretend to be Casey Lowe’s pregnant fiancée in
order to pull her family’s law firm out of trouble, her first answer is a
resounding no! But she owes Casey for wrecking his pool.

Civil Rights Attorney Casey Lowe lives by a code of
practice: never date his boss’s daughter, but he’ll do just about anything to
make partner at the top law firm—even if it means violating his personal code.
He hasn’t bargained on the fierce desire that burns
hotter than the Mojave Desert and combusts every time he gets his boss’s
daughter alone. She may drive him to distraction and melt in his arms, but will
this party girl hang around long enough for him to convince her that all the
best parties… are for two?

“James, get your butt out of that pool right
now.” She spun in an effort to find Sierra who just so happened to be James’s
girlfriend. The only woman with any ability to leash him. “Where’s Sierra?”

He grinned, beckoned. “Hi, babe. Come in. The
water’s perfect.”

“Don’t ‘babe’ me. Get out now. All of you! Get
out before the owner comes home and has us all arrested for trespassing.”

“Don’t worry about it, babe. Casey is never home.
We have time to use the pool and clean up before he gets back.”

“How do you propose to dry out the furniture?”

“When did you turn into such a worrier? I thought
you wanted to party?”

“Par-ty, par-ty, par-ty.” James’s buddies
chanted, waving their fists above their heads like they were back in college at
a keg party.

Their girlfriends giggled and cheered.

And they all ignored Dani.

None of them made a move to get out of the pool.
Frustration unfurled in her chest before slithering downward to tie itself into
a giant angry knot in her stomach.

Dani placed her fingers between her lips and
executed the kind of piercing whistle her mother had always assured her ladies
didn’t do.

“Hey!” Now she had their attention, she rushed
forward. “I said get out of the pool noooooowah—!”

In the back of her mind, she registered the
mistake of dashing across wet tiles on bare feet. But like most mistakes, a
person only ever recognized them after they’d made them. Dani fought the slip
‘n’ slide for as long as she could before accepting the inevitable. She was
going into the pool whether she wanted to or not.

With a loud splash, she hit the water. Sank to
the bottom of the swimming pool, a vague thought drifting through her mind.

Monique DeVere is a full-time author of Sweet 'n' Spicy Romantic Comedy
and Contemporary Romance. She also writes Christian Supernatural Suspense movie
scripts. She was born on the beautiful island of Barbados, where she grew up on
a large plantation with enough wide-open space to let the imagination run free.
She moved to the UK as a teen and shortly after met and fell instantly, and
irrevocably, in love with her very own strong-silent-type hero. When Monique
isn’t writing or spending quality time with her family, she likes to armchair
travel to distant and exciting parts of the world and considers herself to have
the best job on earth.

You can visit her at moniquedevere.com where she invites you to join
her exclusive Sweet ‘n’ Spicy Readers Club packed full of goodies for her
members. Monique loves to hear from her readers, do contact her at
monique@moniquedevere.com.

On last question. Where can readers find you?
(social media, etc.)

I have a lot of hangout. Or rather, I lurk all over
the place.
Readers can find me pretty easily at any one of these online locations.

Diane Burton combines her love of mystery, adventure, science fiction and romance into writing romantic fiction.
For more info and excerpts from her books, visit Diane’s website: http://www.dianeburton.com

Thank you very much, Susan. Rising at 3am started as a bit of insomnia. While tossing and turning, and trying to fall back asleep one night, I thought: "I might as well go to work". It comes in handy :)

Hi, Diane! I'm a total morning person. The type who can jump out of bed and deal with a crisis without so much as a sip of coffee. My brain-dead time is late at night, so I couldn't wait for everyone to go to bed then start work. I can't imagine what nonsense I'd write if I did that! LOL. I suppose it all depends on when we function best :)

I had no idea you had that kind of writing schedule. Sheesh! I wish I had a discipline like that. I think better in the morning too, but not until I've had coffee...luck you. And, I have a hard time forcing myself to get up earlier than I have to for the day job. I'm one of these drafty people, LOL. I can definitely move on without revising. Interesting that titles come to you first. :) Best wishes...love your writing!

I know how hard you work, Alicia! I'm amazed by how much you get done in a day. And you don't even have to lose sleep to do it all!!! You keep all your balls in the air so effortlessly. I need to get you to teach me how to move on without revising the life out of a chapter :) :)